I enjoyed making the Nuno piece with lots of different fabrics and very fine layers of Merino, so I thought I’d make a much larger one. I almost completely forgot, but I took photos while I was making it. They’re really not good, but it shows how much the piece was fulled. This was the size of the piece when it was felted:

This was how much it shrunk after I fulled it well on the bubblewrap:

And this is how much it shrank after fulling on my bead board:

This is how the finished piece looked when it was dry:

I tried fabric pieces I’d used before, both which I knew felted well, and some which I knew didn’t attach well or stayed loose on the edges (a lot of synthetics tend to roll at the edges when torn). I also used pieces I hadn’t tried before. I’m not completely sure what some of them are after felting! This is a closer look at the left side, on an angle:

And the right side:

I think this was a piece from another charity shop dress, it was really softly rippled and pillowy:

This is a scarf from a charity shop scarf I love using. You’ve seen it lots of times, it was goldeny pink open weave, some parts were doubled and some had starnds of golden fibre loose between the layers:

This is one of the synthetics which rolls on the edges (I probaly should have put it in the middle). The outside edge is very loose, but the inside edge was firmly attached:

Looking along the surface, you can see better how high some of the ruffles are:

That photo also shows how much migration there was. It’s more apparent depending on the angle you look at it. This shows really clearly just how much there was:

Looking slightly higher you can see more texture on the fabric:

Overall, I liked the piece, especially the texture, though I did think using just one colour of wool along with the migration dulled it quite a lot, and looking at it on an angle, it does look like it’s been under a dusty bed for a few years! Taking those things into consideration, I tried a piece using just white/natural coloured fabrics, and natural white Merino. I really loved how this turned out, this is from above on a slight angle:

Hi Sylvia,
I laid out the various fabric pieces first, then added 4 very fine layers of Merino. Those 4 layers probably add up to less than 1 ‘regular’ layer in thickness (what I’d use when making something like a book cover). And in some places there will be gaps so even less. I didn’t add any Merino on top of the fabric, it just migrated through. There’s no silk or other fabrics added, just those fabric strips you see, and Merino wool. Have a look at my last post it showsa similar piece I made and how the back looks https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/01/28/nuno-differences/

I love how colorful it is in the top picture. Do you have a plan for either of them? Is it sturdy enough to be a decorative pillow cover, for example? Funny that you commented about the one looking like it came out from under the bed – I tried this process last week and made the mistake of using gray merino and that was my exact reaction to the result. Fortunately, I hadn’t used any fabrics that I valued because it got mixed in with the dryer lint as a trash can liner. 🙂

Thanks, Wren 🙂 Yeah, the migration made it all look the same and much of the brightness of the fabrics was lost. It’s sturdy enough for a pillow, yeah, even a book cover. It might end up quite ‘bobbly’ though if it was handled much because of all the migration. You should save things even if they don’t work out how you wanted, sometimes their perfect use is only apparent years down the line, or just as reference for what to avoid in future!